Survey: Health care industry most targeted by cyberattackers

According to a survey released this morning by 451 Research, 63 percent of health care industry respondents said they had experienced a breach, the highest of any industry vertical studied.

But spending priorities were focused on perimeter defenses. According to the survey, network security was the top category for increased spending over the next 12 months, chosen by 49 percent of respondents. In addition, 78 percent rated network defenses as "very" or "extremely" effective at protecting sensitive data, also the top-rated category.

By comparison, just 72 percent of health care respondents selected data-at-rest defenses as "very" or "extremely" effective, the lowest of any vertical other than government, at 68 percent, and below the U.S. average of 75 percent.

One reason is that health care organizations spend money on strategies that have worked in the past, said Tina Stewart, vice president of marketing at Vormetric, which sponsored the report.

"Lots of investment is going into network and endpoint protection," said Stewart. "However, healthcare organizations should prioritize protecting critical information once perimeters have been breached. It’s not that we don’t need network and endpoint defenses, but priorities should shift to include data security."

It is not uncommon for organizations to default to the status quo, she added.

"It’s reassuring and familiar, after all," she said. "We do think, though, this will start to change over time as organizations are forced to learn the hard way.”

A majority of the health care respondents cited compliance as a top spending priority for IT security.

According to the report, 68 percent of U.S. healthcare respondents view compliance as "very" or "extremely" effective, the highest of any vertical.

"This is understandable," said Stewart. "After all, organizations operating within a regulated industry won’t be able to stay in business without remaining compliant. The surprise is that so many of the professionals polled thought it would also effectively protect them from data breaches."